“Poisonous Witchball” starts off the festivities with melodic, slow and heavy rhythms accentuated with raspy, scream-like vocals (which are heard throughout the cd).  This prepares us for “Poverty and War Forever”, which is an achingly beautiful slab of early doom metal (think Black Widow, UK’s Possessed and Black Sabbath) combined with black metal (in the vein of Agalloch and Ensalved).  The guitar work is lyrical and intricate. This guitar playing also comes into play with “Raging Arcania”, a gorgeous composition of melodic guitars.  The whole song feels psychedelic with a light, floating atmosphere and early King Crimson influence.  “Stropharia Cubensis” mixes things up with blasting, fast tempo drums and thrashy rhythmic guitars.

There are only two downfalls with Stratospheria Cubensis; one is the compositions themselves.  They tend to lean heavy on the prog influence, which is great, but some of the songs just have too many times changes to be a cohesive piece.  It feels like everything but the kitchen sink is thrown in.   The second is the length of the songs, yes we’re aware that they are considered a stoner metal band, but some of the songs seem to drone on a bit.

Yet these are minor downfalls, the incredible musicianship each member displays and the range of influences blended together, produce some wonderfully distinctive music.  They are definitely not a band to be taken lightly; hopefully future releases will build on their already solid foundation.